After an early education in classical music she began to look at contemporary folk music and the singer/songwriter genre, but this was soon supplanted by an interest in older forms, intensifying as her research continued and underlined by a wish to ?create an original music rooted in my own area, taking account of local possibilities and looking back into history to find out more.? She emphasizes that her particular musical journey has ?always been about searching. I love folksong but I?m not exclusively a traditional folk singer. There were always influences coming from other places, too.?

At 20 she switched from guitar to kantele, the Finnish table harp. She plays the 39-string concert kantele, with its five-octave range. ?At first it was just an experiment - I thought it would be fun to have a Finnish instrument for one or two songs. But I became completely fascinated by it.? Meanwhile she was expanding her repertoire to include rune songs, incantations, old melodies from Finland and Karelia, as well as little known medieval ballads and religious folk songs.

Her work has flowed in several streams concurrently. She gives, for instance, solo performances with voice and kantele, and she gives duo concerts in churches, together with organist K?re Nordstoga, in which old folk songs and Easter hymns are juxtaposed with J.S. Bach?s transformations of the same sources. And, since the early 1990s, she has been working ? and recording ? with jazz musicians as part of her ensembles.

Swedish bassist Anders Jormin has been a regular associate for more than a dozen years, joining her for the first time on the recording ?Har du lyttet til elvene om natta?? (Grappa, 1995). And recently Sinnika has been playing regularly with drummer Markku Ounaskari, a mainstay of the Finnish jazz scene.

Her songs often focus on the relationship between people and nature as it is expressed in traditional and modern poetry. Her CD Starflowers (ECM, 2007) features her settings of the poems of Hans B?rli (1918-89) and is performed with an outstanding ensemble that opens up the songs to improvisation. In its inspired intertwining of folksong, literature, and Nordic ?jazz? it may be considered a characteristic ECM production, but it is also a logical extension of the work Sinikka has been developing over the last two decades.

All lyrics on the album are from the poetry of Hans B?rli, a fascinating figure who came to the wider attention of the Norwegian public late in life. He lived as a woodcutter, writing his poetry by night, and his verse is alive with his experiences of the Norwegian forests. In a series of books, beginning in 1945, he wrote more than 1,100 poems. (?Starflowers? is also the title of a B?rli poem.)

Sinikka Langeland championed B?rli?s work for many years and it was in part due to her singing of his texts that the poet?s work was finally published in English. (In the introduction to the book ?We Own the Forests,? published by Norvik Press, Norwich, in 2005, translator Louis Muinzer credits Sinikka?s influence). B?rli, sometimes compared to Whitman and Thoreau, was a more authentic man-of-the-woods than either of those writers, while his symbols and images reach back to the roots of myth.

Official Web Site: www.sinikka.no & www.myspace.com/sinikkalangeland

Langt innpå skoga (Grappa Musikkforlag GRCD 4074, 1994)

Har du lyttet til elvene om natta? (Grappa Musikkforlag GRCD 4107, 1995)

Det syng, with Anne Marit Jacobsen, Halvor Håkanes, Eli Storbekken and Agnes Buen Garnås (Grappa Musikkforlag GRCD 4123, 1997)

Strengen var af røde guld (Grappa Musikkforlag GRCD 4136, 1997)

Lille Rosa (Grappa Musikkforlag HCD 7156, 1999)

Starflowers (ECM, 2007)